Synopsis

From a beloved master of crime fiction, One Fearful Yellow Eye is one of many classic novels featuring Travis McGee, the hard-boiled detective who lives on a houseboat.

It only takes one word to get Travis McGee to leave the sunny deck of his houseboat in Ft. Lauderdale for the gray cold of Chicago. The word is help, and it’s uttered by Glory Geis, an old girlfriend of McGee’s and the pretty young widow of world-renowned neurosurgeon Dr. Fortner Geis. The trouble is, the good doctor converted his considerable estate into cash before he died. But where he stashed it, no one knows.

“John D. MacDonald was the great entertainer of our age, and a mesmerizing storyteller.”—Stephen King

Although everyone from the IRS to Dr. Geis’s greedy grown children suspects that Glory is hiding the lost fortune, she hasn’t a clue as to its whereabouts. To prove her innocence, she must find the money and the culprits who stole it. Enter McGee, for one of the most challenging salvages of his career.

How do you extort $600,000 from a dying man? Someone must have done it very quietly and skillfully. While untangling the mess of Dr. Geis’s last days, McGee makes a startling discovery: Some folks would love nothing better than to bring down the whole family—by any means necessary. But McGee is starting to actually like a few members of the Geis clan—and he vows to bring the guilty to justice.Features a new Introduction by Lee Child

John D. MacDonald|Lee Child

About John D. MacDonald

John D. MacDonald was an American novelist and short-story writer. His works include the Travis McGee series and the novel The Executioners, which was adapted into the film Cape Fear. In 1962 MacDonald was named a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America; in 1980, he won a National Book Award. In print he delighted in smashing the bad guys, deflating the pompous, and exposing the venal. In life, he was a truly empathetic man; his friends, family, and colleagues found him to be loyal, generous, and practical. In business, he was fastidiously ethical. About being a writer, he once expressed with gleeful astonishment, “They pay me to do this! They don’t realize, I would pay them.” He spent the later part of his life in Florida with his wife and son. He died in 1986.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

About Lee Child

Lee Child is the author of seventeen Jack Reacher thrillers, including the New York Times bestsellers Persuader, The Enemy, One Shot, and The Hard Way, and the #1 bestsellers The Affair, Worth Dying For, 61 Hours, Gone Tomorrow, Bad Luck and Trouble, and Nothing to Lose, as well as the short stories “Second Son” and “Deep Down.” His debut, Killing Floor, won both the Anthony and the Barry awards for Best First Mystery, and The Enemy won both the Barry and Nero awards for Best Novel. Foreign rights in the Reacher series have sold in more than forty territories. All titles have been optioned for major motion pictures, the first of which - “Jack Reacher” - will be released in December. A native of England and a former television director, Child lives in New York City, where he is at work on his next thriller, Never Go Back.

Praise

Praise

Praise for John D. MacDonald and the Travis McGee novels

“The great entertainer of our age, and a mesmerizing storyteller.”—Stephen King

“My favorite novelist of all time . . . All I ever wanted was to touch readers as powerfully as John D. MacDonald touched me. No price could be placed on the enormous pleasure that his books have given me. He captured the mood and the spirit of his times more accurately, more hauntingly, than any ‘literature’ writer—yet managed always to tell a thunderingly good, intensely suspenseful tale.”—Dean Koontz

“To diggers a thousand years from now, the works of John D. MacDonald would be a treasure on the order of the tomb of Tutankhamen.”—Kurt Vonnegut

“A master storyteller, a masterful suspense writer . . . John D. MacDonald is a shining example for all of us in the field. Talk about thebest.”—Mary Higgins Clark

“A dominant influence on writers crafting the continuing series character . . . I envy the generation of readers just discovering Travis McGee, and count myself among the many readers savoring his adventures again.”—Sue Grafton

“One of the great sagas in American fiction.”—Robert B. Parker

“Most readers loved MacDonald’s work because he told a rip-roaring yarn. I loved it because he was the first modern writer to nail Florida dead-center, to capture all its languid sleaze, racy sense of promise, and breath-grabbing beauty.”—Carl Hiaasen

“The consummate pro, a master storyteller and witty observer . . . John D. MacDonald created a staggering quantity of wonderful books, each rich with characterization, suspense, and an almost intoxicating sense of place. The Travis McGee novels are among the finest works of fiction ever penned by an American author and they retain a remarkable sense of freshness.”—Jonathan Kellerman

“What a joy that these timeless and treasured novels are available again.”—Ed McBain

“Travis McGee is the last of the great knights-errant: honorable, sensual, skillful, and tough. I can’t think of anyone who has replaced him. I can’t think of anyone who would dare.”—Donald Westlake

“There’s only one thing as good as reading a John D. MacDonald novel: reading it again. A writer way ahead of his time, his Travis McGee books are as entertaining, insightful, and suspenseful today as the moment I first read them. He is the all-time master of the American mystery novel.”—John Saul